


To All The World Must Die

by harborshore



Category: 16th Century CE RPF, Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers, Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/pseuds/harborshore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Kit Marlowe did in the 20th century. A very vague fusion of Dorothy Sayers and Connie Willis's Oxford Time Travel verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To All The World Must Die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chelseagirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/gifts).



> This is really a small bit of a much longer, epic story that I have been writing for two years, wherein Saint-George, Hilary and Kit go off and spy on the Germans during World War II. I was not able to finish said story, but consider this the preview, as it were. And I don't know whether you're familiar with the Oxford Time Travel verse, but all you need to know for the purpose of this story is that I borrowed the element of an Oxford History department that studies history through time travel, and moved it to WWII and put it to use in military intelligence. So the fusion is vague indeed.

1\. 

It begins like this: Peter is called away in the middle of the night. Again. Harriet growls and turns over, tries to go back to sleep, but is roused by her husband.

"Come with me," he says. "This time, the danger is at home."

She dresses hurriedly, in whatever she can lay her hands on, and ends up wearing half a cocktail party outfit and half her sensible writing garb. Peter smiles when he sees her - damn the man - but commends her haste. They are in Oxford far sooner than she'd like, but the look on his face stays her tongue and they rush into a building.

Harriet doesn't know how to explain what she sees in Oxford that night. Her husband disappears into a crowd, there are a lot of strange lights, and a lot of men trying to make her sign papers whilst she stares because oh, her philosophy has never contained such things. At the end of a gathering of light fantastic that looks as though it might implode the compound, Peter's wayward nephew tumbles into her arms dressed in 16th century clothing, smelling of dirt and terrible wine. He's laughing, half delirious, and she cannot for the life of her get any sense out of him.

Peter turns up again in time to whisk Saint-George away and says, mysterious, "The real danger might be to the marriage, after all," but he looks exhilarated, so she isn't too concerned.

When she follows him, sneaking past the guards and the many doors, there is a man with a stab wound who looks enchantingly familiar. Perhaps Peter was right to be concerned.

2\. 

There is what Peter calls a debriefing, and it lasts for days. Eventually, they are deemed one of the more safe households to hide a wayward poet in.

Marlowe turns out to be a charming guest, who smiles more than Saint-George does and keeps up with all of them, asking incessant questions about the century he has landed in. The absence of shock troubled Harriet at first, but Marlowe - "Kit, please, or I shall have to be on my very politest behaviour," - notices, and demurs, claiming a stalwart constitution that has withstood much more than a little tumble through time.

"I cannot complain," he adds. "I have been granted the wish of Faustus, in a manner of speaking: my midnight never came, though it was perilously close. Your nephew snatched me from the midst of people who wished me ill indeed."

"My dear," says Harriet, turning to Peter, "I do believe it actually is Christopher Marlowe who is in our drawing room."

"I know," says Peter. "I keep running out of questions to ask him."

"Is that so?" Harriet raises her eyebrow at him, and holds out her hand to Kit.

He takes her hand, head tilted. "I feel as though I should be quoting dear William. Don't the people of your century expect that?" 

He has been subjected to what Harriet understands is some sort of quick schooling in their time.

Peter clears his throat. "I should not tell you this, but she'd be much more moved by the humble question to come live with you and be your--"

"Love," Kit says, eyebrows going up. "Well then, dear, does all these pleasures move thee, then?"

"Very much," Harriet says, laughing, "But I fear I cannot leave my flock." Peter's smile at that is soft and secret, and Kit lets go of her hand, grinning. 

Harriet laughs, and Peter is looking at them both and smiling and her heart is a little too full, on this dark night, in this dark time that seems as though it couldn’t contain any more miracles.

3.

Peter is called away, and this time Saint-George goes with him, along with Hilary Thorpe who is a protege of Peter's and as such of course is employed with the war effort. Harriet is acutely aware that her distress must be painfully obvious. Marlowe stays with her, though he is subjected to frequent interviews. Apparently the reason Saint-George went to save him has to do with a path over the mountains in Italy, which has remained largely unmapped apart from one of Marlowe's old reports (and doesn't Harriet want to tell Miss Lydgate that they were right, Marlowe had indeed been the Queen's man, as it were). But he is still weak from the stab wound, and so he is waiting behind, this time. And curious about darker matters, this time.

"Tell me about this Hitler."

Harriet bites her lip, considering. "Peter would not want me to," she says, but she can tell by the faint twist of Kit's mouth that he is not much impressed by that line of reasoning.

"They say it is better if I remain hidden," he says. "But they will not tell me why, though they want to take my maps out of my head.. I mislike being told to run away and play, as if I was a chit straight out of the schoolroom."

Well scored, that's a hit. If there was anything more likely to make her reveal the story he asked for, Harriet cannot think of it. "Hitler," she says, considering. "As far as I can tell, he is a nasty little man with very nasty ideas and a remarkable gift for public speaking."

"I have, in my time, met one or two of those fellows," Kit says. "Go on. What is he doing that has your husband and your nephew and that dashingly competent girl rushing off to the continent?"

"There are," she fell quiet, considering how to phrase it best. "It seems they are killing people by the droves. Jews, to be specific. Presumably other so-called undesirables as well."

He swallows. "I had thought," he said, falling silent again. "I had thought you would be done with that, in this time. Foolish, was it not?"

"No," Harriet says, aching for the look on his face (she'd forgotten how young he was) and for Europe, the bleeding continent. How can they recover from another war like the last one? She cannot fathom it. 

”Yes,” Kit says. ”If anyone knows of man’s capacity for violence, it is I,” and she thinks of the buckets of blood required to stage Tamburlaine. He does know, it’s true. He swallows. ”I was a fool to hope that when I was torn out of my time, I would land somewhere more enlightened.”

”We have made some progress,” she says, though she feels how hollow her words ring. 

”And I should not have expected you to eliminate evil,” Kit says. ”That was too high an expectation to place on anyone.”

”Not too high,” Harriet says, because here she feels on surer ground. ”Evil always—you might have expected us to get better at recognizing it for what it is,” she says. ”That, I feel, is the foremost issue here. The unbearable tendency of humanity to not hear what someone is really selling.”

”That is the trouble,” Kit says. ”Tainted wares gleam so brightly, t’is nearly impossible to see that they’re fool’s gold.”

She nods, too heart-sick to speak.

4.

”The last time I saw you like this,” Harriet starts, and then falters. 

Saint-George grins up at her from the hospital bed. ”Speechless, Aunt Harriet? That may be a first.”

”I wasn’t nearly as proud,” she tells him, and he shakes his head, two spots of red appearing on his cheeks.

”None of that,” he says.

”If you can’t handle the honest truth, my lad, you should have gotten yourself a different aunt,” Peter says from his chair in the corner. His face is pale, and she can see the sleepless nights he spent with Saint-George on the way back from France in his eyes.

”As I recall,” Saint-George says, tone light, ”That bit was your fault.”

”So it was,” Peter says, and Harriet suspects she may never grow accustomed to the way Peter looks at her. 

”I had something to do with it as well,” she reminds them both, and Kit comes in just as Peter crosses the room to kiss her for that, soft and light and quick and everything she missed in one breath.

”Is it not customary to kiss the patient?” Kit says. ”Encouraging better health and all.”

”Last time I tried to kiss Aunt Harriet,” Saint-George says thoughtfully, "she boxed my ears and Uncle Peter was angry with me. I may need someone else to kiss me instead, it will surely be better luck that way.”

”Luck is fickle,” Kit says.

”As luck would have it,” Saint-George corrects him and he’s really smiling now, warm and open, ”I had you there, you and Hilary, so I’d call my fortune true.”

”Next time she may lead you to hell,” Kit says and Harriet wonders at the rawness of his voice.

”I wasn’t far off,” Peter says, ”waiting for the three of you to return and then receiving radio that it had gone wrong.”

Saint-George looks up at his uncle and shakes his head faintly, and Harriet is once again reminded of the last time Saint-George was in a hospital and the letter Peter wrote once he found out his nephew had nearly died. ”I’d say I’ll do my best to cause you less concern,” he says, ”but I’m afraid there are those who would make a liar of me.”  
”We’ll do our best not to let them,” Peter says, and Harriet nods in agreement.

”You’d better,” she says. _Let me keep them,_ she prays silently, though she knows the merciless gods of war probably won’t listen to her.

5.

Tallboys in the summer is indecently peaceful. Peter is asleep in his chair in the sun, and Harriet still hasn’t tired of looking at him, having him home for the duration. 

”You do make a liar of me,” Kit says, coming up from behind her.

”How so?” she says, still gazing at Peter.

”Peter told me, one night in France beyond the lines, that you didn’t love him at first sight,” Kit says. ”But now you look at him as if he is all the world.”

”My world holds more than Peter,” Harriet says. ”But I don’t think I make a liar of you – I fell in love in a glance, or fell in with the realization at last, when it happened. It just took much longer than it ought to.”

”Sometimes love is slow because it needs to be,” Kit says. ”Sometimes,” he trails off.

”Sometimes it happens just as it needs to,” Harriet says softly. She can see where he’s looking. Saint-George still isn’t walking well, but he has improved immensely, and under the summer sun, playing with the children, he looks just as he always did.

”Time allowed me to escape death,” Kit says, low. ”I cannot ask anything else.”

”We shall see,” Harriet says. She’s willing to bet time will make a liar of him and give her the right of it, but for now she’s content to watch her family in the sun and know that they are safe.


End file.
